I picked the literal worst year in the history of Alberta to get married.
I've had almost ten other perfectly good, not-economically-abysmal years that I could have used to meet him and get married. But nope, dumb Kate has to pick this year, of all years. Nobody in Alberta has money, and even less people in Alberta have any sympathy. Alberta is a province of hard, determined workers who will themselves into a job and have exactly zero sympathy for anybody who's struggling to find work. It is worse in Alberta to be on financial assistance than it is to be a Nazi.
It's so frustrating. I only moved back to Alberta because I got no paying work after two years -- read that again, two years -- of job-hunting in Saskatchewan. I have applied for I swear every single job in Alberta. Every single one. I have applied for everything I may be even remotely qualified for, and even quite a few jobs that I am not qualified for. I have applied for everything, in pretty well every field of employment. Cashier, food services, waitressing, construction/contracting, sales associates, secretary, janitorial, grocery clerk, post office, farmhand, dishwasher -- you name it, I have applied for it. I promise. I have applied for all of the above in five different towns/cities in the past two days, in fact.
I cry a lot nowadays -- half because I miss my sweet fiancé so much (stupid long-distance), but half because I can't fund my own wedding and I'm losing to ability to convince everyone else that I really actually do want to help finance my wedding. Even his family seems to think I'm expecting a free ride somehow but I swear I am not. I am trying as hard as I know how and if there was a way I could be guaranteed a job, I would have done it already. My parents are experiencing their absolute worst year financially since I was a very young child, so they can't afford to help me out, no matter how much they would love to. I swear I'm not being lazy. I would absolutely pay for this entire wedding out of my own pocket if I could. If it has to be, I will go beg on street corners to get the money together for this wedding without asking any of our family for any more help. I am NOT lazy, and I am NOT looking for a free ride in anything. I know it takes hard work. All I'm looking for is a job.
It would be so easy to just move in together and call it done. It would be a hell of a lot cheaper and way less stressful. But I really want to do this right. I want to have an official Christian wedding. I want to be married before we live together. I want to do the right thing.
Yes, we could sign documents, get legally married, and have a party later -- but we all know the 'have a party later' thing never really happens. If we don't pull together the money for it now, will we really have the discipline to pull it together later, after we're already married? What's the point of it then? People won't take it as seriously then and then they're less likely to come celebrate with us anyway.
Sure, we could postpone the wedding a year or two -- but I hate this long-distance thing. I hate being apart from him, and I want to be with him as much as possible as soon as possible. (For the record, we already have postponed our wedding three months.)
We've cut down the budget as far as it can go. We got our wedding down from an initial $10,000 projected budget to $4,000. We are getting a lot of things at a reduced rate due to networking. There is nothing else we can cut... except the dance.
I never planned out my future wedding as a child, a teen, or even a young adult. I didn't have a dream venue, or dress, or flower arrangement figured out, or a Pinterest board of decorations, or a playlist of songs I wanted. The only thing -- the literal only dream I had about my future wedding (if there even was one) was the dance. I wanted a dance.
I was flowergirl in my aunt and uncle's wedding when I was young. The only thing I remember about that wedding -- besides cupping my aunt's face in my little five-year-old hands and telling her she looked beautiful -- was the dance. I watched all sorts of people get onto the dance floor and dance to the music and I loved it. From that age, I knew that if I ever got married, I wanted a dance at my wedding. That was the only dream I had about my wedding before my engagement. The only one.
And of course that's the most expensive thing. That's the easiest thing to cut, financially. Both the hall and the DJ are big-ticket expenses, and both are dispensable. This puts me into a state of extreme stress (even more than unemployment already has done)...
I want a dance. It's my only dream.
But it's expensive.
But that was the only thing I ever dreamed of having at my wedding.
But you could cut the budget in half if you dropped it.
But it was my dream.
But you don't have a job. You can't fund it. And you can't in good conscience make everyone else fund it when you're already contributing diddly-squat.
But I've always wanted a dance.
It's not like it's a necessity. Grow up.
But I'm only ever going to have one wedding...
And now I'm crying again.
It's starting to feel like God made me defective. Literally all my passions are the exact things that western society will not pay for. Even my artistic siblings have jobs, side passions that fit neatly into a trade or at least something that will pay them minimum wage. I'm willing to learn stuff outside of my passions -- I already have for previous jobs -- but first somebody in this God-forsaken prairie has to actually hire me.
I pray so much about this. I beg and I plead and I yank desperately at the hem of God's cloak but still He is silent. Just like He always has been toward me when I have been in need. I try to do the George Müller thing and not ask anybody else for money and just trust God for it but then my gas tank is empty again and I have rehearsal in literally forty-five minutes and I have no choice but to beg my friends and family on Facebook for money again. And I feel like scum doing that. I feel like the worst specimen of humanity when I have to beg my friends for money just to put gasoline in my vehicle. A lot of times it does feel like I would be better off dead -- I wouldn't cost anything anymore. The literal only thing that stops me is the thought of how devastated my fiancé would be.
I hate that all I think about now is money. I hate that everything is so tied to money. I hate that I'm obsessed with it now, but I have to be -- you cannot exist in western society without it, even if your tastes aren't expensive and you know how to stretch a dollar. A dollar only stretches so far before it breaks.
Everyone talks about the faithfulness of God. Everyone else talks of His miracles of provision. I can't even tell you how many people just in the past week have said to me, 'just let go and let God,' or 'just pray more, and I guarantee...' You don't think I haven't been doing that? You don't think I have prayed my face off for the past two years of my unemployed (and therefore worthless) existence? I have confessed sins, I have prayed for guidance, I have taken risks, I have worked hard, I have tried. What yet do I lack? What magical ingredient am I missing that God still requires from me? I thought His grace to us was just that -- grace. Not based on our merit or our works, but our need. Not once have I pointed to my Bible college degree. Not once have I pointed to a lifetime of church attendance and tithing. Not once. All I have said, over and over and OVER again, is, 'God, you know I need to be able to pay for this. Please help me. Please provide.'
And He is silent.
I have great need, God -- and only some of it is financial. Do You care or not?
Showing posts with label wedding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wedding. Show all posts
31 December 2019
12 January 2016
Dream Funeral
Originally written 2 January 2016, 11.36pm.
Lately I've been realising how much I think about death, particularly my own death.
I've mentioned on this blog before that I was suicidal for the better part of nine years. That time is past, but even after the suicidal thoughts were gone, I still thought about my own death a lot. Because I'd been suicidal for so long, it seemed normal to me. And because I'm an (aspiring) artist, it also stood to reason that I would ponder my own mortality more than the average person.
It never occurred to me that this might be strange until after Christmas. Over the past two weeks, like five people I know have gotten engaged (and I knew of at least eleven before that), and while everyone's talking about wedding planning and stuff, it began to occur to me that I'd never really even considered my own wedding or marriage. My (chronically single) sister has planned out her entire future wedding down to the amount of seconds it will take her to walk down the aisle, and I'd never thought to work out anything more specific than 'I'll be in white.' This might not seem strange to you until I tell you that I have my entire funeral planned out.
I'm not dying -- at least not of anything chronic (sometimes it feels like it though -- but my rant against the Canadian Health Care system is for another day). There's nothing in my life that is generally a harbinger of an early death. I mean, I could be taken out by an accident or something, but at the moment, I'm likely to live another seventy or eighty years (if the genes are any indication).
The other day I was thinking about this, wondering if maybe it was odd for me to have planned out my funeral while all my friends are planning weddings. Then I realised that in nearly every novel I've written, I make a cameo. And in almost every novel that features such a cameo, that character dies. Usually they die young, and usually they die suddenly -- one was murdered, one died of a virus, another indirectly committed suicide. But they're usually the 'me' character -- the one I identify with the most. And usually that character's death drives the book's plot. I've been dying vicariously through my characters. Why?
Again we turn to Kyrie. Only in Kyrie did I actually write a funeral, but that funeral was almost exactly the one I've planned out for myself. I featured some of the same songs I want played at mine, I featured the 'open mic eulogy' idea I want for my funeral, I featured a dance -- the same thing I want at my funeral. I focused on the heartbreak of the first-person narrator and the dead character's closest friend. It was pretty much my dream funeral.
The character who died was the 'me' character. Her goal was to touch people's hearts and encourage them as they trod the weary path of life -- as is mine. Her goal was to bring truth and beauty to a world that increasingly despises both -- as is mine. She had the courage to pursue her dreams of being an artist and when she died, although she touched the lives of many, and many missed her, there were 'villains' at her funeral: her parents (caricatures of everyone who's ever told me I was stupid and worthless purely because I'm not wired for a 9-to-5) and the director of the show that she was performing in when she died (who, as the narrator noted, mourned only the great talent he had lost, not the person herself).
In reflecting on that story, I recalled how much of my life has been spent in despair over this black hole in my heart and soul of feeling like I wasn't important to anybody. The question that has dogged my entire life since I was about nine years old was, If I died, would anybody miss me? That question fueled the lengthy suicidal episode and it still haunts me now. I asked my mother once and her response was, "Pfft! Of course I'd miss you," but it was so flippant and she seemed to think the question was ridiculous and annoying -- just like everything else about me. I'm not sure that if I died today, anybody would miss me for more than a week. And maybe that's why I took it so hard when my cousin died. After we got the phone call saying she was dead, my parents' reaction was, "well, God's in control," as if that settled it. They didn't ache, they didn't hurt, my mother didn't shed a single tear, though heaven knows my sister and I sobbed until we couldn't breathe at her funeral. They didn't mourn. They didn't care. They literally just shrugged and moved on. Less than a month after her death, my mother actually got upset at me: "Look, I don't know why you can't just move on already!"
Again -- less than a month after the third death close to me in as many months. The death of a child. And we're not counting the divorce-deaths in this tally.
And I'm starting to wonder if that's why every spark of life and joy and peace has shriveled up and died within me -- if that's how my parents react when a child close to them has died, how will they react if I were to die? Would they even care? Would they mourn me at all? Would they even notice a difference? And this is my parents. If I'm inconsequential in the eyes of my parents, how much less am I loved by those who aren't obligated to love me? Would I even be lucky enough to get a funeral? Or would people just send pithy cards to my parents with their regrets because they had work and call it good enough? Do I mean anything to anybody?
Some time ago, I wrote a post outlining my personal mission in life, and I've already alluded to it in this post. I want to touch people's lives. I want to encourage them and bring them a spark of hope or joy, the same way David Meece, Terry Scott Taylor/Daniel Amos, White Heart, and so on have brought to me. But if I can't even manage to touch the lives of my own family, never mind the random people I've happened to cross paths with in my life... then I've failed.
People always say on their deathbeds that the most important thing in life is the relationships you have and the people whose lives you've touched -- your spouse, your children, your parents, your family and friends. So many films, so many books, so many stories have that at their core. I'm one of the very few that have picked up on this long before actually dying, but I'm so inept at it. I want to know that I've helped somebody keep their chin up for even one more day. I want to know that something I created helped bring refreshment to a soul weary of this depressing world. But I don't know that I have. I don't know if I or the work of my brain and my hands have been important to anybody. I don't need to be famous. But I want to know that my life meant something to somebody.
Lately I've been realising how much I think about death, particularly my own death.
I've mentioned on this blog before that I was suicidal for the better part of nine years. That time is past, but even after the suicidal thoughts were gone, I still thought about my own death a lot. Because I'd been suicidal for so long, it seemed normal to me. And because I'm an (aspiring) artist, it also stood to reason that I would ponder my own mortality more than the average person.
It never occurred to me that this might be strange until after Christmas. Over the past two weeks, like five people I know have gotten engaged (and I knew of at least eleven before that), and while everyone's talking about wedding planning and stuff, it began to occur to me that I'd never really even considered my own wedding or marriage. My (chronically single) sister has planned out her entire future wedding down to the amount of seconds it will take her to walk down the aisle, and I'd never thought to work out anything more specific than 'I'll be in white.' This might not seem strange to you until I tell you that I have my entire funeral planned out.
I'm not dying -- at least not of anything chronic (sometimes it feels like it though -- but my rant against the Canadian Health Care system is for another day). There's nothing in my life that is generally a harbinger of an early death. I mean, I could be taken out by an accident or something, but at the moment, I'm likely to live another seventy or eighty years (if the genes are any indication).
The other day I was thinking about this, wondering if maybe it was odd for me to have planned out my funeral while all my friends are planning weddings. Then I realised that in nearly every novel I've written, I make a cameo. And in almost every novel that features such a cameo, that character dies. Usually they die young, and usually they die suddenly -- one was murdered, one died of a virus, another indirectly committed suicide. But they're usually the 'me' character -- the one I identify with the most. And usually that character's death drives the book's plot. I've been dying vicariously through my characters. Why?
Again we turn to Kyrie. Only in Kyrie did I actually write a funeral, but that funeral was almost exactly the one I've planned out for myself. I featured some of the same songs I want played at mine, I featured the 'open mic eulogy' idea I want for my funeral, I featured a dance -- the same thing I want at my funeral. I focused on the heartbreak of the first-person narrator and the dead character's closest friend. It was pretty much my dream funeral.
The character who died was the 'me' character. Her goal was to touch people's hearts and encourage them as they trod the weary path of life -- as is mine. Her goal was to bring truth and beauty to a world that increasingly despises both -- as is mine. She had the courage to pursue her dreams of being an artist and when she died, although she touched the lives of many, and many missed her, there were 'villains' at her funeral: her parents (caricatures of everyone who's ever told me I was stupid and worthless purely because I'm not wired for a 9-to-5) and the director of the show that she was performing in when she died (who, as the narrator noted, mourned only the great talent he had lost, not the person herself).
In reflecting on that story, I recalled how much of my life has been spent in despair over this black hole in my heart and soul of feeling like I wasn't important to anybody. The question that has dogged my entire life since I was about nine years old was, If I died, would anybody miss me? That question fueled the lengthy suicidal episode and it still haunts me now. I asked my mother once and her response was, "Pfft! Of course I'd miss you," but it was so flippant and she seemed to think the question was ridiculous and annoying -- just like everything else about me. I'm not sure that if I died today, anybody would miss me for more than a week. And maybe that's why I took it so hard when my cousin died. After we got the phone call saying she was dead, my parents' reaction was, "well, God's in control," as if that settled it. They didn't ache, they didn't hurt, my mother didn't shed a single tear, though heaven knows my sister and I sobbed until we couldn't breathe at her funeral. They didn't mourn. They didn't care. They literally just shrugged and moved on. Less than a month after her death, my mother actually got upset at me: "Look, I don't know why you can't just move on already!"
Again -- less than a month after the third death close to me in as many months. The death of a child. And we're not counting the divorce-deaths in this tally.
And I'm starting to wonder if that's why every spark of life and joy and peace has shriveled up and died within me -- if that's how my parents react when a child close to them has died, how will they react if I were to die? Would they even care? Would they mourn me at all? Would they even notice a difference? And this is my parents. If I'm inconsequential in the eyes of my parents, how much less am I loved by those who aren't obligated to love me? Would I even be lucky enough to get a funeral? Or would people just send pithy cards to my parents with their regrets because they had work and call it good enough? Do I mean anything to anybody?
Some time ago, I wrote a post outlining my personal mission in life, and I've already alluded to it in this post. I want to touch people's lives. I want to encourage them and bring them a spark of hope or joy, the same way David Meece, Terry Scott Taylor/Daniel Amos, White Heart, and so on have brought to me. But if I can't even manage to touch the lives of my own family, never mind the random people I've happened to cross paths with in my life... then I've failed.
People always say on their deathbeds that the most important thing in life is the relationships you have and the people whose lives you've touched -- your spouse, your children, your parents, your family and friends. So many films, so many books, so many stories have that at their core. I'm one of the very few that have picked up on this long before actually dying, but I'm so inept at it. I want to know that I've helped somebody keep their chin up for even one more day. I want to know that something I created helped bring refreshment to a soul weary of this depressing world. But I don't know that I have. I don't know if I or the work of my brain and my hands have been important to anybody. I don't need to be famous. But I want to know that my life meant something to somebody.
10 June 2012
New Experiences
So last night I went to my first 'real' dance.
By that I mean my first everybody-on-the-dancefloor thing.
See, some friends of mine got married -- it was inevitable; we all saw it coming years ago -- and after the ceremony and everything I joined most of the wedding party at the dance.
I hadn't been to a wedding since I was five years old. And at that wedding I was one of the flowergirls and pretty much stole everybody's attention. Even my aunt, the bride, had to share the spotlight with her flowergirl nieces. (And believe me, I soaked it up. I was a total princess back then.) Here I wasn't even in the family, I was just a friend from church.
Anyway, after a gorgeous ceremony, there was the dance.
I half-considered not coming, since I'm hopelessly single and wasn't sure I would be able to find anything else to do aside from sit there awkwardly.
But then I realised I knew most of the people that would probably be there, so I went -- if only because some of them I hadn't seen in a long long while and I hoped to do some catching up with them.
One of them was Kristin. She'd been in England at school for nearly a year now and had finally come back for the summer. Upon arriving at the hall, I made my way over to her and her sister Annika. And within the first three songs, they had teamed up and dragged me out onto the dance floor.
It was weird. Sure I've been dancing 'officially' since I was six years old, but that's classical ballet -- completely different from a roomful of random people bopping around to the Black Eyed Peas. I think I had a harder time of it than the people who have no dance training. I had the rhythm, but I didn't have the freedom. The first few dances were incredibly awkward, but it was even more awkward to sit and kind of look around the room, so I joined Kristin and/or Annika (whichever one was on the dance floor at the time) in dancing to the songs that interested me.
Eventually I grew more comfortable. (Watching a few old friends reveal sides of themselves I'd never seen before helped -- I had no idea my fellow church PowerPoint person could dance!)
And then came a rarity -- a song I actually knew. Cotton Eyed Joe.
Kristin and I had been on the dance floor anyway, so we started on that.
Apparently the version of the song I knew was about a quarter of the length of the actual song -- just when I thought it was wrapping up, it would go back and start all over again. And again. And again.
However, dancer pride does not give up easily. I was nearly spent, but kept going. Kristin had long been reduced to swaying side to side with an extra little 'bop' on each side.
But I had raised the bar too high at the beginning to let myself back off now. I fell into a rather tap-like rhythm -- 1 2 3 4... 1 2 3 4... step side ball change hop, step side ball change hop, step side ball change hop, step side ball change hop, clap, quickly improvise another four-count sequence in time for the next barrage of counts...
About halfway through, I really began to enjoy it. I let myself experiment with the rhythm a little -- three measures the same, the fourth different, or one completely different sequence right in the middle of somewhere, snapping fingers, the odd clap as the guy got to Joe in Where did you come from, Cotton Eyed Joe?
I've never really improvised before -- and most definitely not in public. It was different. It was interesting. And it was actually kind of fun. Even though my sister was probably watching, and so was the guy who told me I was worthless and would never amount to anything, and so was the former youth pastor who probably only knew me as a frowning, nit-picky, selfish shrew, and so were Kristin and Annika's parents...
I probably didn't look like I was having fun. Several times over the course of the song I caught myself counting (out loud, but thankfully not louder than the thumping speakers) "1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4...." and when I'm counting like that I'm usually frowning in concentration. I noticed I was staring through the ceiling as I focused on keeping up with the song. But despite my efforts to tell my face I really was rather enjoying myself, the quick pace of the song demanded way more attention than my facial expression.
But now that I've improvised in public, I'm itching to do it again. It gave my choreographic mind a totally new angle to work from for a few minutes, an angle it had never seen before. Something radically different from the heavily technical, formation-based, every-finger-placed stage numbers I've been demanding of it lately.
So now I need to hang out with more people with upcoming weddings.
By that I mean my first everybody-on-the-dancefloor thing.
See, some friends of mine got married -- it was inevitable; we all saw it coming years ago -- and after the ceremony and everything I joined most of the wedding party at the dance.
I hadn't been to a wedding since I was five years old. And at that wedding I was one of the flowergirls and pretty much stole everybody's attention. Even my aunt, the bride, had to share the spotlight with her flowergirl nieces. (And believe me, I soaked it up. I was a total princess back then.) Here I wasn't even in the family, I was just a friend from church.
Anyway, after a gorgeous ceremony, there was the dance.
I half-considered not coming, since I'm hopelessly single and wasn't sure I would be able to find anything else to do aside from sit there awkwardly.
But then I realised I knew most of the people that would probably be there, so I went -- if only because some of them I hadn't seen in a long long while and I hoped to do some catching up with them.
One of them was Kristin. She'd been in England at school for nearly a year now and had finally come back for the summer. Upon arriving at the hall, I made my way over to her and her sister Annika. And within the first three songs, they had teamed up and dragged me out onto the dance floor.
It was weird. Sure I've been dancing 'officially' since I was six years old, but that's classical ballet -- completely different from a roomful of random people bopping around to the Black Eyed Peas. I think I had a harder time of it than the people who have no dance training. I had the rhythm, but I didn't have the freedom. The first few dances were incredibly awkward, but it was even more awkward to sit and kind of look around the room, so I joined Kristin and/or Annika (whichever one was on the dance floor at the time) in dancing to the songs that interested me.
Eventually I grew more comfortable. (Watching a few old friends reveal sides of themselves I'd never seen before helped -- I had no idea my fellow church PowerPoint person could dance!)
And then came a rarity -- a song I actually knew. Cotton Eyed Joe.
Kristin and I had been on the dance floor anyway, so we started on that.
Apparently the version of the song I knew was about a quarter of the length of the actual song -- just when I thought it was wrapping up, it would go back and start all over again. And again. And again.
However, dancer pride does not give up easily. I was nearly spent, but kept going. Kristin had long been reduced to swaying side to side with an extra little 'bop' on each side.
But I had raised the bar too high at the beginning to let myself back off now. I fell into a rather tap-like rhythm -- 1 2 3 4... 1 2 3 4... step side ball change hop, step side ball change hop, step side ball change hop, step side ball change hop, clap, quickly improvise another four-count sequence in time for the next barrage of counts...
About halfway through, I really began to enjoy it. I let myself experiment with the rhythm a little -- three measures the same, the fourth different, or one completely different sequence right in the middle of somewhere, snapping fingers, the odd clap as the guy got to Joe in Where did you come from, Cotton Eyed Joe?
I've never really improvised before -- and most definitely not in public. It was different. It was interesting. And it was actually kind of fun. Even though my sister was probably watching, and so was the guy who told me I was worthless and would never amount to anything, and so was the former youth pastor who probably only knew me as a frowning, nit-picky, selfish shrew, and so were Kristin and Annika's parents...
I probably didn't look like I was having fun. Several times over the course of the song I caught myself counting (out loud, but thankfully not louder than the thumping speakers) "1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4...." and when I'm counting like that I'm usually frowning in concentration. I noticed I was staring through the ceiling as I focused on keeping up with the song. But despite my efforts to tell my face I really was rather enjoying myself, the quick pace of the song demanded way more attention than my facial expression.
But now that I've improvised in public, I'm itching to do it again. It gave my choreographic mind a totally new angle to work from for a few minutes, an angle it had never seen before. Something radically different from the heavily technical, formation-based, every-finger-placed stage numbers I've been demanding of it lately.
So now I need to hang out with more people with upcoming weddings.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)